The stair goes dark because somebody boarded the skylight over instead of fixing it, or the old plastic dome finally split and the curb underneath it is soft. We have been repairing skylights across Queens since 2005, from the attached houses in Astoria and Ridgewood to the detached blocks out in Bayside and Flushing. Most of the time the skylight itself is not what failed. The assessment is free, and an active leak goes to the front of the schedule.
Work out what is failing first. Our leak diagnostic asks six questions about where the water shows and what the glass looks like, then names the likely cause and the four photos that get it priced properly.
If water is coming in right now, call (718) 646-7053. Phones are answered evenings and weekends and an active leak is flagged the same day. We come out, find the real cause, and tell you straight whether the fix is the flashing, the curb, or the unit itself.
Skylights are the only thing we do, and we have been doing them since 2005. Official VELUX dealer, VELUX Trained and Approved installer, licensed and insured, LIC# 2084179. We are twenty minutes away in Brooklyn, not three boroughs and a bridge.
Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, Ridgewood and Maspeth are full of attached two family houses where the only daylight in the middle of the plan comes from one skylight over the stair. There are no side windows. When that unit gets covered with a sheet of plywood or a tarp, the whole core of the house goes dark and stays dark.
The common version of this job is an old wood curb with a plastic dome dropped on it, re-caulked by three different people over twenty years. The dome is not usually the problem. The curb has gone soft at the corners and the base flashing was never counterflashed properly.
We rebuild the curb square and sound, flash it in, and set a glass unit on it that opens the shaft back up. If the house has a rented top floor, we schedule so the stair is usable at the end of each day.
Jackson Heights garden apartments, the Rego Park and Forest Hills co-ops and the prewar buildings along Queens Boulevard all put the skylight over a common element, which means the roof belongs to the building and the job starts with the board.
Five things get a managing agent moving: a certificate of insurance naming the building, the managing agent and the board as additional insureds, our license number, a written scope saying exactly what gets opened and closed, product data for the unit, and a schedule the super can live with. We send all five without being asked. More on our page for boards and managing agents.
A lot of Queens roofs are flat or low slope with a coated or modified bitumen surface. On those, the unit belongs on a built curb and flashed into the membrane, not sitting down on the deck. A deck mounted unit, the kind meant for a shingle roof, is the single most common wrong thing we find on a low slope Queens roof.
When a roofer re-coated the roof, the coating almost always went straight over the skylight base flashing. It looks clean and it holds water against the curb. That is a leak with a date on it. How we price that work is on the flat roof skylight page, and the full diagnosis walk-through is on skylight leak repair.
Bayside, Douglaston, Whitestone and parts of Flushing are detached houses on real pitched shingle roofs, which is the one part of Queens where a deck mounted unit is the correct answer. It has to go in with the manufacturer step flashing kit, woven into the shingle courses, and that kit is included in every quote we write.
Most of these calls start as an attic conversion. If the room below is finished or about to be, the shaft matters as much as the glass, because an uninsulated shaft will run with condensation in winter and look exactly like a leak.
Forest Hills and Kew Gardens add slate and tile to the mix. Flashing a skylight into slate is a different trade from flashing into asphalt and it costs more. We say so up front rather than finding it on install morning.
A repair gets priced after somebody looks at it, because the difference between re-flashing a sound curb and rebuilding a rotted one is most of the bill. What we publish honestly is the replacement side. On an existing sound curb a skylight replacement starts at $2,079 installed, with $1,600 standard replacement labor. Cutting a brand new opening starts at $3,500 installed, because framing, flashing and the interior finish are all part of it.
Every figure we publish is on the pricing page. If the measure turns up rot, or a structural header beyond ordinary framing, that is priced separately and you approve it before we touch it.
Acrylic dome or glass is a fair question and we install both. We will steer you toward glass and tell you why. Acrylic yellows and hazes in the sun, glass stays clear, it is quieter in heavy rain, it insulates better and it carries a factory seal warranty. If you want the dome, we will sell you the dome.
Long Island City, Maspeth and the industrial stretches of Ridgewood still carry galvanized steel skylights with wire glass over stair bulkheads, factory floors and warehouse space. The steel rusts from inside the glazing pocket and the putty turns to dust.
Wire glass is the old safety standard. A current sloped glazing build wants laminated glass in the inboard lite so nothing can come down into the space below. We replace these and we fabricate custom frames where the opening is not a stock size. See wire glass skylight replacement.
New York Skylight Installers, (718) 646-7053. Skylight specialists since 2005 and skylights are the only thing we do. A general roofer patches around a skylight; a skylight company finds what actually failed. The assessment is free.
Nearly always, yes. Boarding over is what gets done when a leak cannot be found, and the curb underneath is usually the real problem. We rebuild the curb, flash it properly and set a glass unit on it, and the stair gets its daylight back.
We can, and sometimes that is the right call. But a dome that cracked on a twenty year old curb usually sits on wood that is soft at the corners, and a new dome on a bad curb leaks again within a season. We check the curb before we quote the dome.
Because wind driven rain gets pushed sideways and up under a seam that handles straight down rain perfectly well. That points at the flashing or the curb joint rather than the glass. It is a real failure and it will widen.
That is condensation rather than a leak, which is very common in a converted attic or an uninsulated stair shaft. It is still worth solving, but the fix is insulation and glazing, not flashing.
A like for like replacement on an existing curb is usually treated as ordinary repair work. Cutting a new opening, changing the size, or working on a building in a historic district is a different matter. We tell you which one you are in before you spend money on it. Detail is on our permits page.
Yes, and we do the paperwork side rather than leaving it with you. The managing agent gets the insurance certificate naming the right parties, our license number, a written scope, product data and a schedule. That is what keeps a board approval from taking three months.